night must end
by concreteskies
Summary: I'm stuck in an ATM vestibule AU. For Alex.


_I feel the light upon my skin,_

_Like finger-tips_

_Reminding me that night must end._

\- Sleeping at last

* * *

**For Alex, who needs it.**

**For Steph, who has been forcing me to write it.**

**And for all the tea.**

* * *

Set in Season 2.

* * *

"Castle, what the-?" she turns around when she hears the painful thud of someone walking against a wall. It's just in time to observe him flinching away from the automatic glass door that should have opened when he was trying to leave the ATM vestibule.

It's only seconds later that the neon lights flicker and switch from bright white, to the crepuscular yellow of the emergency batteries.

"Oh great" she sighs and he turns around, fingers rubbing away at the already swelling skin around his forehead.

She glances around him and out of the smudgy glass front to find that every window of the opposing building has gone entirely black. And that the city that is usually alight with a thousand stories is now cast in absolute darkness.

"Looks like we're stuck here" she says as she moves over to the door, waving her hand in front of the sensors and eventually trying to pull them apart herself.

"Yeah, no shit Sherlock" he mumbles, still pressing the heels of his hand against his throbbing forehead.

"Oh please, Castle. Can't stand a little pain?" she cocks her eyebrows at him and almost smiles when his eyes narrow.

"So what are we going to do about this?" He asks, pointing into the general direction of the door while still facing her, as if he was worried that the offending glass would attack him as soon as he turned around again.

"Well, I guess I could shoot it down but it would just set off the alarms because I believe they are also attached to the emergency energy plan and so it probably wouldn't be the smartest move"

"But you're a cop" and there is that voice of a five year old again.

"Yes, Castle" she purses her lips, "and that's why I know how stressful New York is during a blackout and that I don't have to add to it."

He peeks at her through his fingers and a sly smile creeps onto his face and she already sighs in advance because in all the time she has spent with him she has gotten to know this smile all too well.

"You just want to be stuck in here with me, Detective, admit it"

"I'm not even going to reward this with an answer"

He wiggles his eyebrows and she sighs once again. Hopefully the electricity will be back soon.

This is going to last forever as it is.

* * *

She watches the swirling darkness out of the window. It's a foreign sight to see New York in such stillness. There are occasional headlights that flicker dancing images onto the grey brick walls and whenever the moon glances at them from behind the heavy curtain of clouds it casts the city in a kind of melancholy silver.

She also looks at the abundance of black windows, some of them alight with the flicker of a flashlight, some of them even lit with the fire of candles, though most of them are just simply black and she wonders about the people behind those windows.

She glances over at the man sitting at the wall opposite from her and thinks that he could probably tell her their stories.

He'd get them right.

* * *

They have been sitting in silence for less than five minutes when something hits her forehead to then come spiraling down and coming to rest in her lap.

"It flies" Castle exclaims and she frowns at the paper plane with the now bumped front.

"Quite the accomplishment" she throws it back to him and it lands safely on the white rubber floor right in front of his crossed legs.

"Wow, you're good at this"

"Yeah, I'm a hero" her voice stays dry but somehow she has to catch the smile that dances in the corner of her lips.

"You definitely are better at landing a plane than Captain America is"

* * *

"Yeah, I'm stuck in an ATM vestibule with Castle, so I can't come to the scene" she nods at the phone for a second. "Yeah, call me if there's anything new okay?"

It took her almost 20 minutes to finally get service and be able to call Espo and Ryan.

As she predicted the town is already spiraling out of control and every available cop is being called in.

"Beckett?" his voice is uncommonly serious and pulls her out of the swirling anxiety in the pits of her stomach at the thought of everything that might happen while she is stuck in here.

"Yeah?" she asks, narrowed eyes traveling along his frame at the uncommon shyness that holds his eyes.

"My phone died and I'd really like to call Alexis, to make sure…" his voice trails off but she understands.

"Here" she scoots over and hands him her own phone.

"Thank you" it's sincere. And as he is dialing she watches the soft curl of his lips and the worry laced into his eyes and thinks about how she sometimes forgets this side of him altogether.

"Hey Alexis" his eyes light up immediately. "No, I'm fine too. I'm stuck at the bank with Beckett"

He listens to his daughter talk for a couple of seconds, sounds that carry through the speaker of the phone dimmed and cloudy.

"I'll tell her" he says then and with that ends the call with an almost reverend swipe of the thumb.

"Alexis says hi" he says as he hands the phone back to her.

* * *

"This is literally the most bored I've ever been"

"It's been half an hour, Castle" he keeps tapping his feet onto the floor and she thinks she might go crazy at any second.

"The most boring thirty minutes I have ever experienced" he looks over at her and she is filled with the strong urge to just say, "No" before he can even speak any further.

"We could find a way to keep us occupied" he offers her a lopsided grin and she rolls her eyes for the umpteenth time.

"Don't speak again"

"Oh Detective, not like that" he has the audacity to laugh. "Get your mind out of the gutter"

She just shakes her head although the huff she was aiming for escapes more akin to a breathy laugh.

"But if you're offering"

"No" she doesn't even look at him and marvels at the way the word cuts through the air.

He ignores it.

Of course.

"I hear you have those handcuffs with you…" he nudges her with his shoulder and grins.

"Yeah and I will use them to chain you to that heater right there and then I am going to shut your mouth somehow so I don't have to listen or deal with you again until we get out of here."

"Kinky" he grins as he cocks his head and wiggles his eyebrows and this time she can't help the small laugh that escapes on a breath to accompany the way she rolls her eyes at him.

* * *

"And so I win again" she says as she draws another cross into a row of three.

"This is so unfair how do you always win?" he asks, staring at the tenth game of tic tac toe they have scribbled onto a transfer form.

"As we have established earlier, I am a hero"

He just nods. And somehow it makes her smile.

* * *

"I can't do it"

It's not even that he can't move his head around it. He doesn't even manage to get the pen swinging in anything resembling a circular formation in the first place.

They are sitting across from each other, underneath the small table on the right side of the vestibule. They have started swinging two of the swing pens attached to the table, to the rotate counterclockwise around them with their heads.

Or at least that's what she's been doing.

"Castle, we've been here for an hour doing this, you can do it"

He tries swinging the pen again but once again it just bounces against his nose.

"No you have to whip it" she illustrates it again with her own pen and once she sees him grinning at her she thinks that they have come to a point where she can read his mind. "Do not comment on this"

He holds up his hands with his eyes wide, a perfect model of innocence.

He tries to do as she says instead of commenting but it only results in the pen practically flying against the top of the table to then drop down on his head and dangle in front of him, as if insulted by his lack of talent.

His eyes fly up to her, a mix of shock and confusion and she is surprised when she hears her own laugh filtering through the air.

She sounds 19, when she was still all red lipstick and leather pants and easy laughter and smiles, not eyeliner as war paint and a heart with too many edges.

* * *

They have passed midnight now and fatigue is clinging to her with a heavy grip.

The sky outside is still concrete and she can feel herself sinking.

"It's okay" he whispers, his voice rumbling so close to her, "I'll wake you up."

His eyes settle on hers and they cover her up and she finds herself nodding, the back of her throat clouded with words like, "thank you" or "I'm not that tired". She just leans her head back against the wall though, eyes fluttering shut and shoulders sagging as if she was Atlas and had finally been relieved of the world.

* * *

"Kate" it's hazy in the dusk of sleep but his voice carries through the blurs of her awareness anyway and she blinks her eyes open to be greeted with white.

The lights are back on.

And her head is nestled into the crook of Castle's neck.

She'll claim that she was still too caught in the tendrils of sleep to fully recognize her position later. But for now she just takes a couple more seconds to revel at the feeling of warmth that has settled on her skin.

* * *

"I had a great blackout" he tells her when he holds the door open for her.

She smiles, a low twine of the lips and a kind of somberness in her eyes.

"Yeah" she nods and he offers her his hand to shake. His grip is warm and sure and when he tells her "Until tomorrow" she answers in kind.

She watches him walk away. Broad shoulder, straight back and the bouncy footing usually reserved for smaller children.

"I'm glad it was you" the words barely fall from her lips. The wind takes them up to carry them away and she thinks about how they say that sounds are never lost, and just echo through the endless expanses of the universe and she thinks that maybe one day she is ready for him to catch them.

* * *

**AN: **This was intended to be a meeting AU but this happened instead. It is inspired by an episode of friends and if you haven't watched it then you should J

Tumblr: dancingontiptoes

Twitter: AlyssaLucyAnne


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